Science and Religion

Citizen Sky

I would like you to imagine the unimaginable vastness of space
with its billions of other stars like our sun. Did you know that
light travels so fast that it can go around the earth (all 24
time zones) seven times in just one second?

There is one star in particular I would like to talk to you about,
it is called epsilon Aurigae. It is so far away that it takes the
light from that star two thousand years to reach earth. This star
is what astronomers call a variable star, that means it varies in
brightness over time. Why does it do that? Now that, my friend, is
the mystery.

To unravel this mystery astronomers have called upon anyone with
an interest in science to help them making observations. And so
an army of amateur astronomers has come together to see and report
how this star changes in brightness. This project is called
Citizen Sky. The great thing about this project and others like it
is that it allows anyone to experience what it is like to
participate in cutting edge scientific research. This is important
because today's society relies more and more on science and
technology. If we all want to make smart decisions about how to
deal with both the blessings and the challenges of technology an
understanding of basic scientific principles is essential.

So you can imagine why I was inspired to produce a documentary
about this project. This documentary is called Mystery in the Sky.
You can find out more about it at http://www.mysteryinthesky.com
You can watch the trailer here http://kck.st/d4krd9
And, if this got you really interested you can even pre-order the
DVD at that same site http://kck.st/d4krd9

Thank you so much for reading this and have a wonderful day.

Kind regards,
Guustaaf Damave
http://www.zebramap.com/

TitusOneNine - Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow—Why God Did Not Create the Universe

2010-09-06T07:00:00.000-07:00

TitusOneNine - Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow—Why God Did Not Create the Universe

In Western culture the Old Testament contains the idea of providential design, but the traditional Christian viewpoint was also greatly influenced by Aristotle, who believed "in an intelligent natural world that functions according to some deliberate design."

That is not the answer of modern science. As recent advances in cosmology suggest, the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.

Our universe seems to be one of many, each with different laws. That multiverse idea is not a notion invented to account for the miracle of fine tuning. It is a consequence predicted by many theories in modern cosmology. If it is true it reduces the strong anthropic principle to the weak one, putting the fine tunings of physical law on the same footing as the environmental factors, for it means that our cosmic habitat—now the entire observable universe—is just one of many

BBC News - Stephen Hawking: God did not create Universe

2010-09-02T17:13:00.000-07:00

BBC News - Stephen Hawking: God did not create Universe

Island holds Darwin's best-kept secret

2010-09-01T05:52:00.000-07:00

BBC News - Island holds Darwin's best-kept secret

Ancient galaxies still actively forming stars

2010-08-25T21:15:00.000-07:00

The Hindu : Sci Tech : Ancient galaxies still actively forming stars

Solar system found 127 light years away with seven planets

2010-08-25T21:13:00.000-07:00

The Hindu : Sci Tech : Solar system found

Night (Night Trilogy 1) by Elie Wiesel

2010-08-14T04:36:00.000-07:00

Night (Night Trilogy 1) by Elie Wiesel: "Night is Elie Wiesel's masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. This new translation by Marion Weisel, Elie's wife and frequent translator, presents this seminal memoir in the language and spirit truest to the author's original intent. And in the substantive new preface, Elie Wiesel reflects on the enduring importance of Night and his lifelong, passionate dedication to ensuring that the world never forgets man capacity for inhumanity to man. Night offers much more than a litany of the daily terrors, everyday perversions, and rampant sadism at Auschwitz and Buchenwald; it also eloquently addresses many of the philosophical as well as personal questions implicit in any serious consideration of what the Holocaust was, what it meant, and what its legacy is and will be."

Memorable Quotes
“Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim”
“Those who kept silent yesterday will remain silent tomorrow”
“"What do you care what he said? Would you want us to consider him a prophet?" His cold eyes stared at me. At last, he said wearily: "I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people."”
“From the depths of the mirror,a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me.”
“Behind me, I heard the same man asking:'For God's sake, where is God?' And from within me, I heard a voice answer: 'Where he is? This is where- hanging here from this gallows...' That night, the soup tasted of corpses.”

Elusive recognition

2010-08-14T04:25:00.000-07:00

Elusive recognition: "Reacting to the statement 'Glauber and others, including E.C.G. Sudarshan,... worked to explain the observations through quantum mechanics' in The New York Times report, Sudarshan said in his letter: 'Actually it is my work, establishing for the first time the (correct) `diagonal representation' of the density operator, that is the basis for all subsequent work in this field. With this diagonal representation not only had I shown the form equivalence between classical and quantum theories of light (all kinds), but it is the only representation from which specifically quantum effects... can be derived.
'The theory referred to as `Glauber's theory' in the report or as `Glauber - Sudarshan' representation in scientific papers is really the Sudarshan `diagonal representation', which was, subsequently, adopted by Glauber and renamed as P-Representation. I would like to assert that literally all the subsequent theoretic developments in the field of Quantum Optics make use of Sudarshan's `diagonal representation', Nobel Prize and citation notwithstanding.'"

Elusive recognition

2010-08-14T03:57:00.000-07:00

New York Times refuses to publish Sudarshan's letter
Reacting to the statement "Glauber and others, including E.C.G. Sudarshan,... worked to explain the observations through quantum mechanics" in The New York Times report, Sudarshan said in his letter: "Actually it is my work, establishing for the first time the (correct) `diagonal representation' of the density operator, that is the basis for all subsequent work in this field. With this diagonal representation not only had I shown the form equivalence between classical and quantum theories of light (all kinds), but it is the only representation from which specifically quantum effects... can be derived.

"The theory referred to as `Glauber's theory' in the report or as `Glauber - Sudarshan' representation in scientific papers is really the Sudarshan `diagonal representation', which was, subsequently, adopted by Glauber and renamed as P-Representation. I would like to assert that literally all the subsequent theoretic developments in the field of Quantum Optics make use of Sudarshan's `diagonal representation', Nobel Prize and citation notwithstanding."
Elusive recognition

Sudarshan's letter

2010-08-14T03:40:00.000-07:00

Sudarshan's letter: "EXCERPTS from E.C.G. Sudarshan's letter to the Nobel Committee on the 2005 Nobel Award in Physics to Roy J. Glauber for Quantum Theory of Optical Coherence:
'In the announcement of the 2005 Physics Nobel Prize, the Swedish Royal Academy has chosen R.J. Glauber to be awarded half of the prize. The prize winners are chosen by the Royal Academy, but no one has the right to take my discoveries and formulations and ascribe them to someone else!
'The correct formulation of the quantum mechanical treatment of optics was carried out by me in my paper in 1963. In that I showed that every state can be represented in the diagonal form... This diagonal representation is valid for all fields.
'... The irony of the situation is that in spite of all these facts being available in print, the diagonal representation instead of being referred to as the Sudarshan representation is dubbed as either the P-Representation (as if Glauber discovered and named it first) or at best as `Glauber-Sudarshan' Representation.
'While the distinction of introducing"

George Sudarshan was robbed of his discoveries

2010-08-14T03:37:00.000-07:00

George Sudarshan: "One of the greatest scientists India has ever produced; Ennakkal Chandy George Sudarshan reached the edge of winning Nobel Prize for Physics, and is the first Malayalee to reach so far. He was nominated for the coveted Nobel Prize six times.

Dr. Sudarshan is known more for his cracking revelations, which shattered the established wisdom, propounded by Albert Einstein that no particles travel faster than light.
The revelations by Dr. Sudarshan about the possible existence of Tachyons created a furore in the scientific world.

Most of the science journals were hesitant to publish his findings, initially. But later, several research papers were published, based on the findings of Dr. Sudarshan. The scientific world is still researching to find out these particles."

E.C.G. Sudarshan shares Dirac Medal with Italian

2010-08-14T03:32:00.000-07:00

The Hindu : Front Page : E.C.G. Sudarshan shares Dirac Medal with Italian: "Ennackal Chandy George Sudarshan, 78, shares the Dirac 2010 with Italian physicist Nicola Cabibbo.
Professor Sudarshan's contributions to theoretical physics include the discovery of the V-A theory of weak interactions, which opened the way for full description of the unified electroweak theory.
The Dirac Medal of ICTP is awarded by the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) on renowned physicist P.A.M Dirac's birthday — August 8. It was first awarded in 1985. The winners also receive a prize of $5,000"

BBC News - Planck telescope reveals ancient cosmic light

2010-07-05T02:57:00.000-07:00

BBC News - Planck telescope reveals ancient cosmic light

Chromoscope

2010-07-05T02:56:00.000-07:00

Chromoscope

BBC News - Planck telescope reveals ancient cosmic light

2010-07-05T02:51:00.000-07:00

BBC News - Planck telescope reveals ancient cosmic light

BBC News - Goce satellite views Earth's gravity in high definition

2010-06-28T23:52:00.000-07:00

BBC News - Goce satellite views Earth's gravity in high definition

Neutrino Search

2010-06-24T16:44:00.000-07:00

A hard-to-observe fundamental particle that travels alone, the neutrino has little or no mass, so rarely interacts with other particles.
Neutrinos are ubiquitous throughout our universe. They were produced during the Big Bang, and many of those are still around. New ones are constantly being created too, through natural occurrences like solar fusion in the sun's core, or radioactive elements decaying in the Earth's mantle, as well as when the particle accelerator at Fermilab purposely smashes protons into carbon foils.
Our sun produces so many that hundreds of billions are zinging through our bodies every second, Coan said. It's hoped the new detector can resolve questions surrounding three different kinds of neutrinos electron, tau and muon and their "oscillation" from one type to another as they travel, he said.
Scientists at the new detectors will analyze data from Fermilab's neutrino beam to observe evidence of neutrinos when the speedy, lightweight particles occasionally smash into the carbon nuclei in the scintillating oil of the detector, causing a burst of light flashes, Coan said.
NOvA is looking for the most elusive oscillation of the muon type of neutrino to the electron type, Cooper said.
More information: http://www-nova.fnal.gov/

Neutrino search

2010-06-24T16:41:00.001-07:00

in reference to: Neutrino data to flow in 2010; NOvA scientists tune design (view on Google Sidewiki)

Alfred Russel Wallace: Darwin's co-discoverer - a forgotten hero

2009-02-15T18:52:00.000-08:00

The Times
February 12, 2009
: Darwin's co-discoverer
A little-known naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, also proposed the theory of natural selection - and this spurred Charles Darwin on to publish his great book.
Anjana Ahuja

In the 1850s, a bearded Victorian naturalist set sail for exotic shores, determined to discover the origin of species. He returned to England laden with once-living bounty - mostly birds, beetles and butterflies - which he dispersed, for modest sums, to museums and cultured gentlemen. He retained specimens for himself, the study of which furnished such papers as On the Law that has regulated the Introduction of New Species. His investigations would culminate, in 1858, in an explanation of evolution through natural selection.

This is not Charles Darwin, but Alfred Russel Wallace, who shared joint billing with Darwin on the paper that would set the elder scientist on the road to fame. The stirringly titled On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection, read out to the Linnean Society in Piccadilly on July 1, 1858, raised the controversial idea of natural selection. This argued that favourable traits in a species would result in greater reproductive success for the lucky ones that carried them, and these traits - such as a long neck for eating leaves from high branches - would gradually spread. This might slowly lead to new species (say, giraffes).

The story of what happened afterwards to Darwin and Wallace might well have been entitled “On the Tendency of Co-Discoverers of a Theory to Depart Indefinitely in Their Fortunes”. Darwin, whose reputation was sealed a year later with the publication of On the Origin of Species, lies entombed in Westminster Abbey, metaphorically rubbing shoulders with prime ministers and royalty. The bicentenary of his birth is being marked in grand fashion this week. Wallace lies in a small Dorset graveyard, flanked until recently by unchecked leylandii, his name and legacy largely unfamiliar beyond his family and a coterie of scientists and historians. More

Trillions of earth like planets supporting life in our galaxy

2009-02-15T18:44:00.000-08:00

The Times
February 16, 2009
We are not alone: 'trillions' of planets could be supporting life
Mark Henderson, Science Editor, in Chicago
Almost every star similar to the Sun probably has a life-harbouring planet like the Earth in orbit around it, a leading astronomer said yesterday.

The discovery of hundreds of planets around distant stars in our galaxy suggests that most solar systems have a world like ours that is capable of supporting life, and many of them are likely to have evolved it, according to Alan Boss, of the Carnegie Institution in Washington.

Nasa’s Kepler spacecraft, which will be launched next month to seek Earth-like worlds, is expected to find thousands of rocky planets in the patch of sky it surveys, Dr Boss told the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Chicago.

“We’re on the verge of finding out convincingly how frequently habitable planets occur in the Universe,” he said. “A little over 20 years ago we knew of no other planetary system other than our own. We now know of well over 300. I suspect that virtually every star when you look up at the night sky has an Earth-like planet around it.” These “exoplanets” are mainly gas giants like Jupiter, but they do include some “super-Earths” that are a few times larger than our planet. While smaller worlds like ours are invisible to existing telescopes, Kepler will be capable of finding them.More

Darwin’s theory of evolution was compatible with Christian faith: Vatican

2009-02-10T16:08:00.000-08:00

From The Times
February 11, 2009
Vatican buries the hatchet with Charles Darwin

Richard Owen in Rome
The Vatican has admitted that Charles Darwin was on the right track when he claimed that Man descended from apes.

A leading official declared yesterday that Darwin’s theory of evolution was compatible with Christian faith, and could even be traced to St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas. “In fact, what we mean by evolution is the world as created by God,” said Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture. The Vatican also dealt the final blow to speculation that Pope Benedict XVI might be prepared to endorse the theory of Intelligent Design, whose advocates credit a “higher power” for the complexities of life.

Organisers of a papal-backed conference next month marking the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species said that at first it had even been proposed to ban Intelligent Design from the event, as “poor theology and poor science”. Intelligent Design would be discussed at the fringes of the conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University, but merely as a “cultural phenomenon”, rather than a scientific or theological issue, organisers said.

The conference is seen as a landmark in relations between faith and science. Three years ago advocates of Intelligent Design seized on the Pope’s reference to an “intelligent project” as proof that he favoured their views. More

smallest exoplanet, Corot-Exo-7b, has a high temperature - between 1,000 and 1,500C

2009-02-03T22:29:00.000-08:00

Telescope sees smallest exoplanet

By Paul Rincon
Science reporter, BBC News

When planets transit their star, they block out light - like Mercury above
The smallest planet yet found outside the Solar System has been detected by a French space telescope.
The rocky world is less than twice the size of Earth.
Only a handful of planets have so far been found with a mass comparable to Earth, Venus, Mars or Mercury.
The discovery was made by Corot, an orbiting observatory with a 27cm-diameter telescope to search for planets orbiting other stars.
About 330 of these "exoplanets" have been discovered so far. But most of them have been gas giants similar to Jupiter or Neptune.
"For the first time, we have unambiguously detected a planet that is 'rocky' in the same sense as our own Earth," said Malcolm Fridlund, Corot project scientist from the European Space Agency (Esa).
"We now have to understand this object further to put it into context, and continue our search for smaller, more Earth-like objects with Corot," he added.
The new find, Corot-Exo-7b, has a diameter less than twice that of Earth and orbits its Sun-like star once every 20 hours. More

NanoTech: What spoiled the CERN party

2009-01-13T18:34:00.000-08:00

NanoTech: What spoiled the CERN party

Dark matter clues in galactic crash

2008-12-28T06:24:00.000-08:00

From The Times
December 27, 2008

Dark matter in Galaxy cluster
Space Images of a spectacular intergalactic collision between galaxy clusters have provided new evidence for the existence of dark matter, which scientists believe forms an invisible framework for the Universe.

The pink in the picture above indicates ordinary matter - mostly hot gas - while the blue area is believed to indicate the presence of dark matter. As the two clusters merged at millions of miles per hour, the hot gas collided and slowed down, while the dark matter did not, explaining the wider spread of blue.

The collision happened halfway across the Universe about 100 million years ago. The image of the cluster, known as MACSJ0025.4-1222, was captured with the Nasa Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope. source

Water in Saturn's moon

2008-11-26T17:41:00.000-08:00

A pleasant surprise from Saturn’s moon

— Photo: NASA

Geyser-like eruptions of ice particles and water vapour from Saturn’s moon Enceladus.

WASHINGTON: Astronomers looking at the spectacular supersonic plumes of gas and dust shooting off one of Saturn’s moons have said there are strong hints of liquid water, a key building block of life.

Their research, appearing in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature, adds to the growing push to explore further the moon Enceladus, as one of the solar system’s most compelling places for potential life.

Using images from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Cassini probe, astronomers had already figured that the mysterious plumes shooting from Enceladus’ icy terrain contain water vapour.

New calculations suggesting the gas and dust spew at speeds faster-than-sound make the case for liquid, said study lead author Candice Hansen of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

Her team calculated that the plumes travel more than 2,176 kmph. Reaching that speed “is hard to do without liquids,” Ms. Hansen said. more

India became the fourth nation to mark its presence on the Moon on Friday, Nov. 14, 2008

2008-11-15T14:45:00.000-08:00

Go to Google News

	Photo 1 of 2

Former Indian president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, right, greets Indian Space Research Organization Chairman G. Madhavan Nair, left, soon after India's Moon Impact Probe successfully landed on the lunar surface, in Bangalore, India, Friday, Nov. 14, 2008. India became the fourth nation to mark its presence on the Moon after a Moon Impact Probe painted with the national tri-color successfully landed on the lunar surface after being detached from the unmanned spacecraft Chandrayaan-1, according to the Indian Space Research Organisation. (AP Photo)

India celebrates planting its flag on moon

By GAVIN RABINOWITZ – 12 hours ago

NEW DELHI (AP) — India rejoiced Saturday at joining an elite club by planting its flag on the moon as the country's space agency released the first pictures of the cratered surface taken by its maiden lunar mission.

A probe sent late Friday from the orbiting mother spacecraft took pictures and gathered other data India needs for a future moon landing as it plummeted to a crash-landing at the moon's south pole, said Indian Space Research Organization spokesman B.R. Guruprasad.

The box-shaped probe was painted with India's saffron, white and green flag, sparking celebrations in the country that is striving to become a world power.

"The tricolor has landed," the Hindustan Times said in a banner headline, while The Asian Age proclaimed "India is big cheese."

As India's economy has boomed in recent years, it has sought to convert its newfound wealth — built on the nation's high-tech sector — into political and military clout. The moon mission comes just months after it finalized a deal with the United States that recognizes India as a nuclear power, and leaders hope the mission will further enhance its prestige.

"This momentous achievement shall be etched in the history of India as a grateful tribute to our scientific community for their resolute efforts to take India to a global leadership position," said Sonia Gandhi, head of the ruling Congress party.

To date only the U.S., Russia, the European Space Agency, Japan and China — and now India — have sent missions to the moon.

But while the celebrations conjured up images akin to that of the U.S. flag unfurled on the moon by Apollo astronauts, India's flag is most likely scattered over a wide swath of the moon's Shackleton crater after the probe slammed into the surface at more than 3,100 miles (5,000 kilometers) per hour.

The violent landing was planned and Indian scientists hope to study the images and data sent back by the probe during its 25-minute descent to prepare for a future "soft" landing, Guruprasad told The Associated Press. It carried a video imaging system, a radar altimeter and a mass spectrometer.

The video imaging system took pictures of the moon's surface, while the altimeter measured the rate of descent of the probe and the mass spectrometer studied the extremely thin lunar atmosphere.

Guruprasad said the pictures that were released were raw images and that scientists had not yet analyzed the information sent by the probe.

It was the first stage of a two-year mission aimed at measuring not only the surface of the moon, but what lies beneath. The probe was one of 11 payloads on the spacecraft Chandrayaan-1. Chandrayaan means "moon craft" in ancient Sanskrit.

India plans to follow the mission by landing a rover on the moon in 2011 and, eventually, with a manned space program, though this has not been authorized yet.

source

Planets outside the solar system - 130 light years away

2008-11-14T16:30:00.000-08:00

Planets outside the solar system

Dennis Overbye

— PHOTO: NASA/The New York Times

GALACTIC SURPRISE: A dust ring, in red, surrounds the star Fomalhaut, located at the centre of the image but is not visible.

A little more of the universe has been pried out of the shadows. Two groups of astronomers have taken the first pictures of what are most likely planets going around other stars.

The achievement, the result of years of effort on improved observational techniques and better data analysis, presages more such discoveries, the experts said, and will open the door to new investigations and discoveries of what planets are and how they came to be formed.

“It’s the tip of iceberg,” said Christian Marois of the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics. “Now that we know they are there, there is going to be an explosion.”

Mr. Marois is the leader of a team that recorded three planets circling a star known as HR 8799 that is 130 light-years away in the constellation Pegasus. The other team, led by Paul Kalas of the University of California, Berkeley, found a planet orbiting the star Fomalhaut, 25 light-years from earth, in the constellation Piscis Austrinus. more

Mars Mission Ends for Phoenix

2008-11-11T05:26:00.000-08:00

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Mars Mission Ends for Phoenix Spacecraft

By ALICIA CHANG

posted: 45 MINUTES AGO

comments: 414

filed under: SCIENCE NEWS

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LOS ANGELES (Nov. 10) - NASA on Monday declared an end to the Phoenix mission, some five months after the spacecraft became the first to land in Mars' arctic plains and taste water on another planet.

Mission engineers have not heard from the Phoenix lander in over a week. It fell silent shortly after a raging dust storm blocked sunlight from reaching its solar panels. Although ground controllers will direct two satellites orbiting Mars to listen for Phoenix for several more weeks, the chances that it will respond are slim.

Lost in Space

Corby Waste, Jet Propulsion Laboratory / NASA / AP

13 photos

NASA said Monday the Phoenix Mars mission is over, five months after the spacecraft landed on the Red Planet. Its crowning achievement was providing proof there is water on Mars. Scientists said they had not heard from the Phoenix lander in more than a week. Here, an artist's rendering shows the lander beginning to shut down operations as winter sets in.

(Note: Please disable your pop-up blocker)

"We are actually ceasing operations, declaring an end of mission operations at this point," said project manager Barry Goldstein of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which managed the $475 million mission.

Phoenix's demise was predicted. Unlike its hardy twin rover cousins Spirit and Opportunity, which are approaching their fifth year near the red planet's more hospitable equatorial region, Phoenix's days were numbered from the outset. With sunlight waning and winter encroaching the arctic plains, scientists had said it was a matter of time before Phoenix would freeze to death.

Doug McCuistion, who heads the Mars exploration program at NASA headquarters, said people should view Phoenix's end as "an Irish wake rather than a funeral."

2008-11-07T20:16:00.000-08:00

Hubbles new images

The newly installed Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has been beaming back spectacular images of our universe. Here is a stunning view of a colliding galaxy dubbed the "Tadpole" (UGC10214). Set against a rich tapestry of 6,000 galaxies, the Tadpole, with its long tail of stars, looks like a runaway pinwheel firework. Another picture depicts a spectacular collision between two spiral galaxies — dubbed "The Mice" — that presages what may happen to our own Milky Way several billion years from now when it collides with the neighboring galaxy in the constellation Andromeda. Looking closer to home, ACS imaged the "Cone Nebula," a craggy-looking mountaintop of cold gas and dust that is a cousin to Hubble's iconic "pillars of creation" in the Eagle Nebula, photographed in 1995. Peering into a celestial maternity ward called the Omega Nebula or M17, ACS revealed a watercolor fantasy-world of glowing gases, where stars and perhaps embryonic planetary systems are forming.

Chandrayaan Mission - A.P. J. Abdul Kalam Visits Indian Deep Space Network at Byalalu village

2008-11-01T17:47:00.000-07:00

Every Indian should be proud of Chandrayaan, says Kalam

Bangalore Bureau

A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

BANGALORE: Byalalu village near Bangalore had a high profile visitor on Saturday. The former President, A.P. J. Abdul Kalam, visited the Indian Deep Space Network and the giant antenna here and expressed his desire to see an Indian scientist land on the moon by 2021. “I would be 90 years old then,” he told a gathering of senior scientists.

G. Madhavan Nair, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) presented Mr. Kalam with a picture of the Earth taken by the Terrain Mapping Camera on board Chandrayaan-1 from an altitude of 70,000 km.

Earlier in the day, speaking to reporters after launching an emergency response service in the city, Mr. Kalam said he believed that every Indian should be proud of the Chandrayaan, the country’s first moon mission programme taken up by ISRO.

The images captured by the spacecraft were of high resolution and quality and therefore “an indication of what it holds for the future,” he added. On November 8, when Chandrayaan leaves the Earth’s gravity and enters the moon’s orbit, will be the next milestone for the mission, Mr. Kalam said. source

India and the moon.

2008-10-26T21:04:00.000-07:00

Back to the India and the moon. The country will be the fourth to place its flag on the moon, there have been 60 launches before Chandrayaan, so what is the euphoria about? The Indian space programme, Newsweek says, can't claim to be a space leader but is far ahead of other countries on one count: its use of space technologies to solve problems of everyday people on the ground. India's investment in Earth observation satellites is a tenth of what the West invests but it has managed to build and launch 46 satellites in 20 years. more

Chandrayaan blasts off at 6.20 am on Wenesday 22 October 2008

2008-10-22T03:12:00.000-07:00

Scientific community celebrates successful launch of Chandrayaan-1

Bangalore (IANS): It is a time for jubilation for the scientific community of India and they are cherishing every moment of it with the successful launch of Chandrayaan-1 early Wednesday.

The Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, India's first unmanned scientific mission to the moon, blasted off successfully towards destination moon from Sriharikota, about 80 km from Chennai.

With the successful launch of Chandrayaan-1, India now has joined an exclusive club of nations including the US, former Soviet Union, European Space Agency, China and Japan to have sent missions to moon.

New Scientist

2008-10-12T16:45:00.000-07:00

October 10, 2008 12:11 PM

$7.5 trillion for a 'transitional' fossil?

Palaeontologists: this could be your lucky day. Turkish creationist Adnan Oktarhas just offered ten trillion lira - a mouth-watering $7.5 trillion - to "anyone who produces a single intermediate-form fossil demonstrating evolution". more

U.S. video game magnate Richard Garriott starts space travel

2008-10-12T03:02:00.000-07:00

U.S. space tourist blasts off in Russian rocket

Enlarge Photo U.S. space tourist Richard Garriott gives a thumbs-up after donning his spacesuit at Baikonur cosmodrome...

Sun, Oct 12 02:37 PM

By Maria Golovnina

BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan (Reuters) - blasted off into space aboard a Russian rocket on Sunday watched by his father, a NASA astronaut who went into space at the height of the Cold War.

The Russian Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft lifted off in clear weather from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on the Kazakh steppes just after 1.00 p.m. (0700 GMT).

A video game developer from Texas, Garriott paid $35 million to fly into space alongside U.S. astronaut Michael Fincke and Russian cosmonaut Yury Lonchakov.

Garriott's father, Owen, watched the blast off through binoculars on an observation platform and Garriott's girlfriend, Kelly Miller, burst into tears. more

Shark in ‘virgin birth’

2008-10-10T18:30:00.000-07:00

The Hindu Oct 11, 2008

RICHMOND: Scientists have confirmed the second case of a “virgin birth” in a shark.

In a study reported on Friday in the Journal of Fish Biology, scientists said DNA testing proved that a pup carried by a female Atlantic blacktip shark in the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Centre contained no genetic material from a male.

The first documented case of asexual reproduction, or parthenogenesis, among sharks involved a pup born to a hammerhead at an Omaha, Nebraska, zoo.

The aquarium sharks that reproduced without mates each carried only one pup, while some shark species can produce litters numbering in the dozen or more. The scientists cautioned that the rare asexual births should not be viewed as a solution to declining global shark populations.

“It is very unlikely that a small number of female survivors could build their numbers up very quickly by undergoing virgin birth,” Mr. Chapman said.

The medical mystery began 16 months ago after the death of the Atlantic blacktip shark named Tidbit at the Virginia Beach aquarium. No male blacktip sharks were present during her eight years at the aquarium. In May 2007, the 152-cm, 43-kg shark died of stress-related complications related to her unknown pregnancy after undergoing a yearly checkup. The 25.4-cm shark pup was found during a necropsy of Tidbit, surprising aquarium officials. They initially thought the embryonic pup was either a product of a virgin birth or a cross between the blacktip and a male of another shark species — which has never been documented, Chapman said. Tidbit’s pup was nearly full term, and likely would have been quickly eaten by “really big sand tiger sharks,” he said. more

Bebo message to Gliese 581c 20.5light years away

2008-10-09T17:26:00.000-07:00

George W Bush chosen to illustrate evil Obama good

Telegraph.co.uk October 10, 2008

Messages from Earth sent to distant planet by Bebo

Messages from Earth – including a photo of George W Bush chosen to illustrate evil - have been sent to a distant planet that could be home to intelligent life.

By Matthew Moore
Last Updated: 8:12PM BST 09 Oct 2008

The 501 notes, pictures and drawings were chosen by members of Bebo, the youth-orientated social networking site.

A digital time capsule was beamed in a high-powered radio wave in the direction of Gliese 581c, an "Earth-like" planet 20.5 light years away, from Ukraine's National Space Agency on Thursday morning.

The message flew past Mars within four minutes of being broadcast from the gigantic RT-70 radio telescope, but won't reach its destination until 2029.

It includes images of landmarks such as the London Eye and Edinburgh Castle, along with pictures of famous faces including Hillary Clinton and television presenters Richard and Judy.

There are also hundreds of notes written by Bebo members about their lives, ambitions and views of Earth. The messages included in the digital capsule were selected by an online vote.

One reads: "I wish I could be alive to see the day contact between the two worlds is made, I've been born way too early."

Others took a less serious approach, with many using their messages to pay tribute to their favourite celebrities. One message simply reads: "Best thing about Earth. George Sampson", in reference to the Britain's Got Talent winner.

The image of Mr Bush was chosen by Gillian Anderson, the X-Files star who was one of several celebrities involved in the project. She selected a picture of Barack Obama to illustrate goodness.

Pop band McFly chose to send a message praising singer Cheryl Cole's "perfect body".

Oli Madgett, who has been running the A Message From Earth project for Bebo, said he hoped that any aliens living on Gliese 581c would be impressed with the the notes

"We've spent years developing this, and I'm really pleased we've reached this stage," he said.

"Over half a million people have got involved and been really enthusiastic about uploading their messages onto Bebo, which has been great to see.

"I think it has really captured people's imaginations and made them think about our own planet Earth and humanity's impact upon it. I hope whoever's out there is impressed by what Earth has to offer."

Gliese 581c, which was discovered last year, has a radius that is 1.5 times the Earth's. Scientists have estimated that its average temperature is between 0 and 40 C, meaning that water would exist in a liquid state – one of the essential ingredients for life as we know it. source

10ft (3m) high bronze statue for Stephen Hawking

2008-10-09T17:16:00.000-07:00

BBC

Page last updated at 16:02 GMT, Thursday, 9 October 2008 17:02 UK

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Hawking to be depicted in statue

A scale model has been made of a planned sculpture

Professor Stephen Hawking will be depicted in a 10ft (3m) high bronze statue of him in his wheelchair.

The £250,000 sculpture has been commissioned by Professor Hawking's colleagues at Cambridge University and will be sited near his office.

Sculptor Eve Shepherd said she hoped to show the "power of Professor Hawking's mind and the fragility of his body."

Shepherd has made a scale model of the sculpture, but is unsure when the full size version will be finished.

The 32-year-old artist from Brighton has been following Professor Hawking in an attempt to learn more about his personality.

Professor Hawking's office is in the Cambridge University Centre for Theoretical Cosmology. source

140 computer centres from 33 countries join Worldwide LHC Computing Grid

2008-10-06T17:44:00.000-07:00

World's biggest computing grid set to process data from Large Hadron Collider

SATURDAY, 04 OCTOBER 2008 00:00 TDI BUREAU

Washington, Oct 4 - The world's largest computing grid is all set to tackle the biggest ever data challenge from the most powerful accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
Three weeks after the first particle beams were injected into the LHC, the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid combines the power of more than 140 computer centres from 33 countries to analyse and manage more than 15 million gigabytes of LHC data every year.

A gigabyte has 1,024 megabytes of information and a single megabyte has one million bytes of information. read more

Haber-Bosch' discovery of ammonia from nitrogen - the most significant invention of the 20th Century,

2008-10-06T09:12:00.000-07:00

ScienceDaily (Oct. 6, 2008) — As a result of the Haber-Bosch process for the synthesis of ammonia from atmospheric nitrogen, billions of people have been fed, millions have died in armed conflict and a cascade of environmental changes has been set in motion, suggests a feature article by scientists from four of the world’s leading environmental research centres that will be published online on 28 September in Nature Geoscience.

See also:

Earth & Climate

Reference

The feature appears 100 years after Fritz Haber filed his patent on the ‘synthesis of ammonia from its elements’ for which he was later awarded the 1918 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Lead author, Jan Willem Erisman from the Energy research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN), explains: “The increasing demand for food and biofuels makes efficient use of nitrogen fertilizer and more sustainable energy a challenge for many. Haber-Bosch is perhaps the most significant invention of the 20th Century, yet it has many side effects. Now we need a new invention that changes the world just as much, but without the environmental impact.” more

Big Bang and Higgs Boson

2008-10-03T18:38:00.000-07:00

Man to unlock secrets of the universe

New Delhi, Fri, 03 Oct 2008Madhuri Vasnani

The Universe is a vast wide-open space that comprises smallest particle to the biggest galaxy. No one can judge how big the Universe is. Astronomers use a special instrument called a spectroscope to tell whether an object is moving away from Earth or toward Earth.

Based on this, scientists came to know that the Universe is still growing outward in every direction.

Man due to profound curiousness is eager to know about the origin of the universe, i.e. from where he came from; beginning of the universe; and how it will come to an end. Therefore, man has been fascinated by the questions that he had in his mind and has tried his level best in order to search possible scientific answers to them.

According to scientists, a powerful explosion called the ‘Big Bang’ happened about 13.7 billion years ago, which set the Universe into a motion which is continuing till today. Scientists are unaware about the fact that whether this motion will stop, change way, or keep going forever.

The scientists of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research have been carrying out the ‘Big Bang’ Experiment by using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), to unlock the secrets of the universe. This experiment is being carried out at the Swiss-French Border in a 27 KM tunnel which is 100 meters below ground level. The LHC is used to crash sub-atomic particles at the speed of light and create a condition which existed for a fraction of a second after the “Big Bang” which created the whole Universe 13.7 billion years ago. The collider is the most powerful tool hoping to uncover the secrets behind the laws of the universe, both on the tiny scale of quantum mechanics and the huge domain of galaxies and black holes.

Scientists have been indulged in this experiment since 14 years and the cost is around 2.6 billion Swiss Francs. This experiment started successfully on September 10, 2008 without doing any harm and is expected to shed light on mass, matter, basic foundation of life and other untold mysteries of Universe. More than 100 scientists from India are a part of this experiment. India has also exported important Software and Hardware used in conducting this experiment.

According to critics, this experiment is very dangerous for mankind and would create a Black Hole which would swallow the whole Earth inside-out. But leading scientists declared the experiments to be completely safe and secure.

After two weeks of experimentation, a major helium leak was found into the tunnel housing the colossal machine. In order to fix the collider the section of the tunnel will have to be warmed up and later cooled down again, which would take around two months. The laboratory closes down in the winter, so the experiment would resume after spring of 2009.

Since the machine will be shut down for repairs, so the researchers, who have been waiting 14 years for the world’s largest particle collider, will have to see any results in the Big Bang experiment for few months.

When this is complete, scientists will be provided with data to answer important questions about the nature of the universe. And one of the answers they are keen to know is: Does the Higgs boson exist?

The Higgs boson is a particle responsible for the transition between energy and matter. It has even been christened with a divine nickname – the God particle. If the experiments at the LHC prove to be a successful one, then it would be the first experiment ever and scientists would find possible answers that how the energy from the Big Bang formed matter, and us. read

Francois Englert and Robert Brout

2008-10-02T16:28:00.000-07:00

Interview with Professors Francois Englert and Robert Brout .

Large Hadron Collider experiment

2008-10-01T22:44:00.000-07:00

SCIENCE

Heart of the matter

R. RAMACHANDRAN, Frontline, Volume 25 - Issue 20 :: Sep. 27-Oct. 10, 2008

The Large Hadron Collider experiment ushers in a new era of scientific probe into the mystery of the universe.

COURTESY: CERN

One of the first images from the Compact Muon Solenoid, one of the six experiments of the LHC, shows the debris of particles picked up in the detector’s calorimeters and muon chambers after the first beam on September 10 was steered into the collimator (tungsten block).

SEPTEMBER 10 is a red-letter day for physicists around the world. Though a couple of years overdue in coming, the stage was set on that date for the beginning of the largest and costliest ever international scientific experiment, which was 14 years in the making, involving nearly 9,000 physicists from 60 countries and about $8 billion at the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva.

The first particle beams were injected into what will be the most powerful particle accelerator and steered around the full 26.659 km circumference of this ringed underground machine in both clockwise and anticlockwise directions. Called the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the accelerator lies at an average depth of 100 metre in a 3.7 m diameter tunnel straddling the Swiss-French border near the Alps. To bring down the cost considerably, the LHC is reusing the tunnel that housed the previous high-energy accelerator, the Large Electron-Positron (LEP) collider. The LEP was shut down in 2000. more

Extraordinary Machine

Indian contribution

Faith In God Releives Pain: UK Scientists

2008-09-29T19:12:00.000-07:00

A team at Oxford University has based its findings on an experiment in which 12 Roman Catholics and 12 atheists were "tortured" with electric shocks as they studied two paintings - Virgin Mary and Leonardo da Vinci's Lady With An Ermine.

The subjects spent half-an-hour inside an MRI scanner, receiving a series of 20 electric shocks in four sessions and each time they had to rate how much it hurt on a scale of 0 to 100 as they looked at the paintings.

The researchers hoped that the face of the Virgin Mary would induce a religious state of mind in the believers, while da Vinci's painting was chosen because it did not look dissimilar and would be calming.

The scientists found that the Catholics seemed to be able to block out much of the pain. ...more

Chinese astronaut walks in space.

2008-09-27T09:25:00.000-07:00

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Chinese astronaut walks in space

China astronaut's space walk

A Chinese astronaut has become the first in his country's history to take a walk in space.

In an operation broadcast live on national TV, fighter pilot Zhai Zhigang emerged from the capsule orbiting the Earth to wave a Chinese flag.

Mr Zhai, 42, stayed outside the capsule for 15 minutes while his two fellow astronauts stayed in the spacecraft.

The exercise is seen as key to China's ambition to build an orbiting station in the next few years.

Mr Zhai began the manoeuvre just after 1630 Beijing Time (0830 GMT) on Saturday, and completed it about 15 minutes later. more

New Protein Encyclopedia covers 20,325 human proteins in 57000 pages

2008-09-26T14:50:00.000-07:00

New Protein Encyclopedia Looks At Life As It Is Organized In Body, At Molecular Level

ScienceDaily (Sep. 26, 2008) —

See also:

Plants & Animals

Reference

Professor Amos Bairoch, head of the SIB's Swiss-Prot group said: "If human DNA is the script of life, proteins are its actors, its living embodiment."

He added that the human genome-sequencing project produced a dictionary. This new encyclopaedia takes one major step further by looking at life as it is really organised in our body at the molecular level. The results will speed up the scientific work which aims to improve our quality of life. Particularly when it comes to understanding what life is, and how we can combat genetic-based diseases.

While proteins are the essence of life, when they become defective they can cause much suffering and often early death. Man's knowledge of proteins such as insulin and haemoglobins is crucial to combating diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer's, cystic fibrosis and haemophilia.

Professor Bairoch said, "The general public would understand some of the entries in our protein encyclopaedia. Insulin, for instance, is a small protein that controls glucose levels in our blood. The performance-booster EPO is the protein used illegally by some cyclists. In the human body it takes many forms. But we detect its use in sport because competitors use a manufactured form which is not natural."

The new protein encyclopaedia, which will evolve further as our knowledge is refined, now informs a major part of the work of thousands of health researchers around the word. The data covers 20,325 human proteins.

The breakthrough can be seen as one of the 21st century's major life science outcomes. It can help improve our chances of defeating a variety of diseases, by enabling researchers to model the interaction between individual patients, diseases and drugs.

Progress on the Human Protein Initiative (HPI) project has been rapid. Ten years ago, we had good data on less than 1000 proteins. Two years ago, we had good entries for 15,000, now the collection is complete. But one of the remaining challenges, though, is still to complete the same encyclopaedia of proteins for other animals.

This new protein encyclopaedia is published online and available for free to users. In printed form, it would correspond to 57 volumes of about 1,000 pages each.

Read it all

Time Eating Grasshopper Clock -- Chronophage : New Way to see time

2008-09-19T19:52:00.000-07:00

Cambridge clock click here for video and story

The gold-plated timepiece, which is four feet across, was officially unveiled at Corpus Christi College last night by Stephen Hawking, the city's world-famous maths professor.

As the News has reported, the mechanical clock has been designed and paid for by Dr John Taylor, an honorary fellow at the college, and it has pride of place on the college's new library, which is also funded by him.

The clock is powered by a pendulum, driven by a mechanism in the shape of a giant grasshopper.
The grasshopper was sculpted by Cambridge-based artist Matthew Lane Sanderson, and the whole timepiece was put together by Huxley Bertram Engineering at Cottenham.

It has no hands or digital numerals. Instead there is a series of slits cut into the face, and blue LED lights are arranged behind the slits, which run round rapidly in concentric circles and pause at the correct hour, minute, and second. Its massive round face was engineered from a single sheet of stainless steel, and gold-plated.

Dr Taylor told the News: "It is my way of giving something back to my old college and to Cambridge - and I expect the clock will last for 200 years."

Helped by a carer, Prof Hawking pressed a button to reveal it to a waiting crowd of onlookers and college staff, headed by the President of Corpus Christi, Prof Christopher Andrew.

The inauguration was followed by a lecture by former Astronomer Royal Sir Arnold Wolfendale.

Unveiling the clock, Prof Hawking said: "I have been particularly concerned with time. Why does time go forward? Does time have a beginning and an end? Can one go sideways in time? Some of the answers are given in my book, A Brief History of Time.

"One of the challenges has been to measure the passage of time accurately. Dr John Taylor's invention is a true mechanical spring-driven clock, but it also uses modern technology, high-precision engineering, and high-quality craftsmanship to considerable effect."
Link

The Corpus Clock From the Telegraph.co.uk

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 12:45AM BST 20 Sep 2008

The Corpus Clock, a true mechanical mechanism, which is wound up by an electric motor, has no hands Photo: PA
The £1 million Corpus Clock has been invented and designed by Dr John Taylor for Corpus Christi College Cambridge for the exterior of the college's new library building.
It has no hands but displays the time on its four-foot wide face by using a series of lights denoting hours minutes and seconds.
Dr Taylor, a former student at Corpus Christi and now an inventor and horologist, created it as a tribute to John Harrison, the pioneer of longitude, who took 36 years to build one clock and he was still calibrating it when he died at his home in London on March 24, 1776, his 83rd birthday....>more

From The Times
September 19, 2008
Cambridge reveals the time-eater, Chronophage, devourer of hours

Lucy Bannerman

Unlike conventional timepieces, the extraordinary “Chronophage”, does not use hands or digital numerals to show the time.

Instead, it relies on a mechanical monster – part demonic grasshopper, part locust – that rocks back and forth along a golden disc, edged like a lizard’s spine. By a complex feat of engineering, its movement triggers blue flashing lights that dart across the clockface, letting students know if they are late for a lecture.

About two metres in diameter, the clock is made from discs of stainless steel and plated with 24-carat gold. With each slackening of the monster’s jaw, and release of its claws, another second is devoured. Each new hour is signalled by the rattle of a chain on an unseen coffin to remind passers-by of their mortality.

The timepiece is completely accurate only every five minutes. The rest of the time, the pendulum pauses then corrects itself as if by magic. The blue lights play optical illusions on the eye, whirring around the disc one second, then appearing to freeze the next. The effect is hypnotic.

The clock is the brainchild of John Taylor, an inventor who made his fortune developing the kettle thermostat after graduating from Corpus Christi in the 1950s. A long-time admirer of Harrison, Dr Taylor, 72, said that he wanted to make a clock that would revolutionise the art of timekeeping. So he took the so-called “grasshopper escapement”, a tiny device invented by Harrison hidden away inside 18th-century clocks, and turned it into the time-eating insect that can be seen today on the college wall. The ultimate aim, explains Dr Taylor, was to create a timepiece that kept time while, paradoxically, showing it, as they say, to be relative.

“Clocks are fixed, whereas we all know, time is fluid. It drags and it flies. Like Einstein said, an hour sitting next to a pretty girl can be like a minute, and a minute sitting on a hot stove can seem like an hour. I wanted this clock to reflect that, to play tricks with observers.” Dr Christopher de Hamel, Fellow Librarian at Corpus Christi, said: “I wanted it to be a monster, because time itself is a monster . . . It is horrendous, and horrible, and beautiful. It reminds me of the locusts from the Book of Revelations.

“It lashes its tongue, and flicks its eyes at you. It’s bonkers.” More

From

Trendwatch

By Wolfgang Gruener

Friday, September 19, 2008 17:13

vote nowBuzz up!

Cambridge (UK) – Physicist Stephen Hawking helped unveil what may be most scary clock in the world. The Corpus Clock, located at the University of Cambridge, visualizes the belief that time will always be against us. A grasshopper/locust sits atop the dial, eating away every second of our life, swallowing minutes and hours with pleasure. You could get very depressed watching this $2 million clock tick away – or you may see this time-eater as an image to highlight the value of every second that is given to us.

The unusual clock, designed by John Taylor and unveiled by Stephen Hawking, took five years to create and makes a big statement through its gold-plated, almost 4 foot-wide dial and a gold-encrusted monster, part grasshopper, part locust sitting on top of it. As the time passes, the grasshopper/locust turns the dial, sixty times a second, and eats minutes and hours with opening jaws and shaking tail.

The time (hours, minutes, seconds) is shown through slits in the dial, which are illuminated with blue LEDs. "It is terrifying, it is meant to be," Taylor told The Guardian. "Basically I view time as not on your side. He'll eat up every minute of your life, and as soon as one has gone he's salivating for the next. It's not a bad thing to remind students of. I never felt like this until I woke up on my 70th birthday, and was stricken at the thought of how much I still wanted to do, and how little time remained."

"I also wanted to depict that time is a destroyer - once a minute is gone you can't get it back,” he said.

Taylor, who amassed a fortune by inventing and selling kettle thermostats, said that it took 200 people and an investment of £1 million, almost $2 million, to build the lock. Its electric motor is expected to last for about 25 years. Link

Corpus Clock - A New Time Machine

2008-09-19T19:34:00.000-07:00

Dr Taylor told the News: "It is my way of giving something back to my old college and to Cambridge - and I expect the clock will last for 200 years."

Helped by a carer, Prof Hawking pressed a button to reveal it to a waiting crowd of onlookers and college staff, headed by the President of Corpus Christi, Prof Christopher Andrew.

The inauguration was followed by a lecture by former Astronomer Royal Sir Arnold Wolfendale, and then a banquet.

Unveiling the clock, Prof Hawking said: "I have been particularly concerned with time. Why does time go forward? Does time have a beginning and an end? Can one go sideways in time? Some of the answers are given in my book, A Brief History of Time.

"One of the challenges has been to measure the passage of time accurately. Dr John Taylor's invention is a true mechanical spring-driven clock, but it also uses modern technology, high-precision engineering, and high-quality craftsmanship to considerable effect."

He said the grasshopper would become "a much loved and possibly feared addition to Cambridge's cityscape."

Stephen Hawking unveils strange new way to tell the time - a little late

Prof Stephen Hawking, the physicist who tried to explain time, has unveiled one of the world's most striking clocks - 14 minutes and 55 seconds late.

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 12:45AM BST 20 Sep 2008

The Corpus Clock, a true mechanical mechanism, which is wound up by an electric motor, has no hands Photo: PA

The £1 million Corpus Clock has been invented and designed by Dr John Taylor for Corpus Christi College Cambridge for the exterior of the college's new library building.

It has no hands but displays the time on its four-foot wide face by using a series of lights denoting hours minutes and seconds.

Dr Taylor, a former student at Corpus Christi and now an inventor and horologist, created it as a tribute to John Harrison, the pioneer of longitude, who took 36 years to build one clock and he was still calibrating it when he died at his home in London on March 24, 1776, his 83rd birthday.

Large Hadron Collider gets new name: 'Halo'

2008-09-17T21:19:00.000-07:00

Large Hadron Collider: Public chooses 'Halo' as its new name

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor

Last Updated: 6:01pm BST 17/09/2008

Forget about the yawn-inducing Large Hadron Collider.

Full coverage of the Large Hadron Collider atom smasher

Large Hadron Collider: Scientists launch competition for a funkier name

Large Hadron Collider: First subatomic particle collision to happen next week

The name "Halo" sounds much catchier and should adorn the £4.4 billion experiment, according to a poll organised by the Royal Society of Chemistry in London


	The public have decided the Large Hadron Collider should have the catchier name Halo

The Large Hadron Collider does what it says on the tin, since hadron refers to the subatomic particles that the giant machine smashes together at a shade below the speed of light.

But this "fails to reflect the drama of its mission, or the inspiration it should be conveying to the wider public," says Dr Richard Pike, chief executive of the Society.

The Society launched a competition to suggest an inspiring name for the 17 mile circumference machine, which is going to smash its first particles next week at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research in Geneva, known by its French acronym Cern.

After sifting more than 2,500 responses, ranging from The Big Banger to Infinite Devil Machine and The Matter Splatterer, it has now selected a winner to rechristen the vast enterprise.

Fed up with "the contrived acronyms that plague the world of science," the RSC says it "picked a suggestion which is simple, memorable, and brings to mind the deserved grandeur of perhaps the most important experiment ever built."

"Halo conjures visions of radiant beauty, power and wisdom. The circle of light reflects the collider's form; it is a crowning achievement of science and engineering. It also gives more than a nod to the experiment's importance to religious debate.

The name Halo was by far the most popular entry. The winner was chosen at random from the hundreds of people who suggested it; Aaron Borges of Rhode Island, USA, who wins £500 ($892) .

Link

Indian American Mathew L. Thakur wins 2008 Benedict Cassen Prize for Nuclear Medicine

2008-09-17T19:31:00.000-07:00

Mathew L. Thakur

Wednesday,17 September 2008 21:33 hrs IST

Indian American wins nuke medicine 'Nobel'
-

New York: An Indian American doctor, Mathew L. Thakur has been conferred the Society of Nuclear Medicine's 2008 Benedict Cassen Prize, often called the 'Nobel' of nuclear medicine.

Thakur, a pioneer in molecular imaging, an emerging technique that helps detect disease at the molecular or cellular level in the human body and thus helps develop personalised medicine, received the biennial $25,000 award during the Society's 55th annual meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana, recently.

He is professor of radiology and radiation oncology/nuclear medicine at the Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and a member of the Kimmel Cancer Centre at the university.

Thakur has focused on developing and evaluating radiopharmaceuticals for diagnostic imaging and therapy. He has produced and isolated many medically useful radionuclides and has been instrumental in the preparation of several novel radiopharmaceuticals, noted the society in its press release.

Radionuclides or radiopharmaceuticals, also called tracers, are drugs with small amount of radioactive material that are administered to patients, and the radiation emitted detected or photographed. In most cases, it enables physicians to quickly diagnose conditions like cancer, heart disease, thyroid disorders and bone fractures. Sometimes, this compound is also used to treat the condition.

"Among the many life threatening diseases, cancer remains the most formidable disease for mankind," Thakur, who holds several patents, was quoted as saying. His current research focuses on finding DNA patches that can help in the early detection of breast and prostate cancer.

At the award ceremony, Thakur delivered the Cassen Lecture on 'Genomic Biomarkers for Molecular Imaging: Predicting the Future.'

The Cassen Award, sponsored by the Society of Nuclear Medicine's Education and Research Foundation, is named after the late physicist Benedict Cassen and only eight other researchers have been awarded the prize so far.

Thakur's career, spanning more than 35 years, has benefited millions of patients worldwide. He has developed widely used radiopharmaceuticals that have improved diagnostic accuracy and patient care, the university said.

He became interested in nuclear medicine and radiopharmaceuticals as an undergraduate at Bombay University, and later as a graduate student at the University of London in the late 1960s.

Link Manorama

Link Times of India

Immigrant Sun: Drifting in the Galaxy

2008-09-17T05:34:00.000-07:00

Immigrant Sun: Our Star Could Be Far From Where It Started In Milky Way

ScienceDaily (Sep. 16, 2008) — A long-standing scientific belief holds that stars tend to hang out in the same general part of a galaxy where they originally formed. Some astrophysicists have recently questioned whether that is true, and now new simulations show that, at least in galaxies similar to our own Milky Way, stars such as the sun can migrate great distances.

What's more, if our sun has moved far from where it was formed more than 4 billion years ago, that could change the entire notion that there are parts of galaxies – so-called habitable zones – that are more conducive to supporting life than other areas are.

"Our view of the extent of the habitable zone is based in part on the idea that certain chemical elements necessary for life are available in some parts of a galaxy's disk but not others," said Rok Roškar, a doctoral student in astronomy at the University of Washington.

"If stars migrate, then that zone can't be a stationary place."

If the idea of habitable zone doesn't hold up, it would change scientists' understanding of just where, and how, life could evolve in a galaxy, he said. ....> full story

Oxygen At The Origin Of The Solar System

2008-09-17T05:31:00.000-07:00

New Clues To Oxygen At The Origin Of The Solar System

ScienceDaily (Sep. 17, 2008) — Oxygen is the most abundant element on Earth, accounting for almost half the planet’s mass. Of its three stable isotopes, oxygen 16 (¹⁶O, whose nucleus contains eight neutrons) makes up 99.762 percent of oxygen on Earth, while heavier oxygen 17 (¹⁷O, with nine neutrons) accounts for just 0.038 percent, and the heaviest isotope, oxygen 18 (¹⁸O, with 10 neutrons), makes up 0.2 percent.

Yet minerals in some of the most primitive objects in the solar system, including the meteorites called carbonaceous chondrites, have quite different ratios of oxygen isotopes than on Earth; presumably the rare heavy isotopes occurred in much greater abundances in the early solar system.

...> full story

LOFAR - Digital Telescope to Observe the Birth of Stars

2008-09-14T07:19:00.000-07:00

Astronomers at the School of Physical Sciences, University of Kent, have joined an innovative project that aims to address many of the key issues in astrophysics. The University’s main role will be to search for signals which accompany the birth of stars.

Such an undertaking will require the completion of arrays of antennas to detect radio waves at metre-long wavelengths. The low frequencies of these waves gives rise to the telescope by the name of LOFAR – the LOw Frequency ARray. The arrays will be spread across the Netherlands, Germany, France and Great Britain.

LOFAR is the first telescope of this new sort, using an array of simple omni-directional antennas instead of mechanical signal processing with a dish. The electronic signals from the antennas are digitised, transported to a central digital processor, and combined in software to emulate a conventional antenna.

.">Science Daily

Stem cells from Skin row

2008-09-12T17:28:00.000-07:00

Japan university gets patent for stem cell breakthrough

Fri Sep 12, 12:02 PM ET

TOKYO (AFP) - Japan has given Kyoto University a patent for groundbreaking stem cell research in what is believed to be a world first for such scientific research, officials said Friday.
Teams at Kyoto University and at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in the United States last year discovered how to use skin to produce stem cells -- which can develop into various organs or nerves.

The finding was hailed by the Vatican and US President George W. Bush because it can circumvent an ethical row over conventional stem cell research using human embryos. More

Black Holes pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope.

2008-09-12T17:23:00.000-07:00

http://space.about.com/od/blackholes/ig/Black-Holes-Pictures-/Formed when a massive star collapses from its own gravity, black holes have such a strong pull of gravity that not even light can escape from them.

Today's scientists believe that a black hole is the end product in the lifecycle of a giant star. If this star is three or four times as massive as our own sun, even after it has exhausted all its fuel, then it can collapse under its own gravity. Just like a crab burying itself at the beach and pulling the sand down over itself, the collapsing star pulls in everything around it as well.

These Black Holes pictures are from the Hubble Space Telescope.

LifeWorld: Chandrayaan -1 : India's moon mission to launch in October 2008

2008-09-11T18:57:00.000-07:00

LifeWorld: Chandrayaan -1 : India's moon mission to launch in October 2008

Satyendra Nath Bose: The Indian behind the boson

2008-09-10T20:49:00.000-07:00

It is Satyendra Nath Bose (1894-1974) after whom the sub-atomic particle 'boson' is named - probably the only noun in the English language named after an Indian (hence never capitalized).

Sharon Ann Holgate, a British science writer and broadcaster who made an acclaimed radio documentary on Bose for the BBC some years ago said that Bose was overlooked, perhaps because of institutionalised racism.

Of the three main past and present physicists behind the landmark proton-smashing quantum physics experiment in Geneva Wednesday, one has a Nobel Prize, the other is waiting to find out if he has one, and the third never got one. The third man is the Bose of the 'Higgs-boson' experiment - Satyendra Nath Bose.

The $10 billion Large Hadron Collider experiment in Switzerland Wednesday could not have happened without Bose and Albert Einstein.

In 1924, Bose sent a paper to Einstein describing a statistical model that eventually led to the discovery of the Bose-Einstein condensate phenomenon.

The paper laid the basis for describing one of the two categories of the elementary particles that make up an atom - one was boson, and the other came to be known as fermion, after the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi.

Einstein had already won the Nobel in 1921 for services to theoretical physics and the discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect, and Fermi won it in 1938.

Decades later, in 1964, the British scientist Peter Higgs returned from a walk in the Scottish mountains to tell his colleagues that he had just experienced his "one big idea", which could hold a clue to how matter in the universe got its mass in the billionth of a second after the Big Bang.

Higgs eventually came up with his theory of the Higgs boson, a boson that gives mass to all other subatomic particles that happen to interact with it in a 'Higgs field'. The more they interact, the heavier they become. And the ones that don't interact don't gather mass.

The theory could not only throw further light on the creation of the universe, but also help explain the shape of it.

Wednesday's experiment at the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland, where protons will be smashed against each other at great speed, will be the first attempt to actually observe the Higgs boson - nicknamed the 'God particle'. So far, it is the last undetected elementary particle, also called a fundamental particle, going by the standard theory of particle physics.

Higgs, who is professor emeritus at Edinburgh University, is now widely tipped to win the Nobel, particularly if the Higgs boson is detected.

The first Nobels for physics in the 21st century went jointly to three Americans - Eric Cornell, Carl Wieman and Wolfgang Ketterle. The won it for creating the 'condensate' - a new type of matter - that Bose and Einstein had postulated.

According to Bose's grandson Falguni Sarkar, six other physicists have won the Nobel for work in the area of Bose statistics.

However, 34 years after his death, the Nobel continues to elude Satyendra Nath Bose himself. Read

Secrets of the hidden universe: Test Drive Successful

2008-09-10T18:50:00.000-07:00

Secrets of the hidden universe: first hurdle cleared in hunt for dark matter

Tense scientists celebrate as beams of protons go round Cern ring in both directions

Ian Sample, science correspondent
The Guardian,
Thursday September 11 2008
Article history

The man with his finger on the button was Lyn Evans, a Welsh engineer who has devoted 14 years of his life to the machine. The moment came at 8.32am UK time and was broadcast around the world, and via videolink to more than 300 journalists who had descended on the laboratory to witness the event.

The LHC lies 100 metres beneath fields and farmland, where it occupies a 17-mile (27km) circular tunnel carved through rock and sandstone.

When it is working at full speed, it will be the most powerful particle collider on the planet. Inside, it will crash subatomic particles together with enough energy to re-create the intense conditions that existed one trillionth of a second after the big bang.

Yesterday, the scientists' ambitions were more modest. Before the machine can be put to work, its makers had to take it for a test drive.

The goal was to send beams of protons around the collider's hollow ring in both directions, to make sure there were no obstructions and to check that powerful superconducting magnets surrounding the ring can steer the beams with exquisite precision. When Cern attempted this on an older, less powerful collider in 1996, it found two beer bottles stuck inside the ring.

Yesterday, the tests went more smoothly than many scientists dared hope for. At 9.28am UK time, two spots flickered on to a screen in the control room, one spot caused by the beam on the way in, the other as it completed its first lap. Cheering, relieved scientists clapped and slapped each other on the back. The test had taken less than one hour. "My first thought was one of relief. I'm too preoccupied at the moment to have emotions," said Evans, who later confessed to laying a bet with fellow physicist Steve Meyers, head of Cern's accelerator and beam operations, that he could get the beam to circulate within an hour.

By 2pm UK time, the scientists had sent a beam of protons around the machine in the opposite, anticlockwise direction to the first beam.

David Evans, a physicist from the University of Birmingham, who works on one of the machine's giant detectors, said: "It's gone so well I'm optimistic we can probably do low-energy collisions within days. We could be looking at high-energy collisions within weeks." Now the real work begins. Scientists will spend the coming days and weeks fine-tuning the machine and testing the four huge detectors, which will sift through the subatomic debris of the collisions for evidence of new physics.

Tejinder Virdee, a physicist at Imperial College London and head of one of the LHC's detector groups, said: "With the LHC, we will be able to look deeper into matter, and look further back in time than ever before.

"Particle physics is a modern name for the centuries-old effort to understand the laws of nature."

Within weeks, the machine could produce particles of dark matter, a mysterious substance that stretches through the universe and clings around galaxies. The discovery would be profound.

Astronomers know that normal matter, the stuff of stars and planets, makes up only 5% of the observable universe. Dark matter accounts for a further 25%, with the remaining 70% being the even more exotic dark energy, which drives the expansion of the cosmos.

By creating a microcosm of the big bang, scientists hope the machine will explain how the forces of nature became what they are today.

The machine will also hunt the famed Higgs boson, or "God particle". Named after Peter Higgs, an Edinburgh University physicist, the Higgs boson is crucial to understanding the origin of mass.

Cern thought it had caught a glimpse of the Higgs particle before with its previous particle collider in 2000.

It will now race against scientists at the American Fermilab, near Chicago, which is working around the clock to discover the particle first. "This is a unique machine and it will certainly advance the knowledge of mankind. But we also know that pushing technology to the limit always has spinoffs. We don't know what the LHC will bring apart from wonderful science, but we're already working on a far more powerful system than the internet. Where we lead, others will follow," said Evans. Read

Moment of Truth

Mark Henderson

The cheering began at 8.32, when the first particles were detected snaking around the first three kilometres (1.9 miles) of the 27km (17mile) LHC ring. By 8.55, it was halfway around the track, which will soon be used to smash protons and lead ions against each other at 99.9999991 per cent of the speed of light. At 9.28, only 56 minutes after the start-up, came the champagne moment — the double trace showing that the beam had completed the first of countless trillions of laps that will explain many of the enduring mysteries of the Universe.

Once the clockwise beam was circulating, the anticlockwise stream with which it will ultimately collide was inserted in the afternoon, completing its own tour of duty soon after 2pm. Over the next few days, they will be tuned and “captured” so they fire in neat pulses. Then it will be time for business – the collisions that will generate new physics.

By recreating the environment of the dawn of time, the LHC will detect phenomena that have never before been observed. It should find the Higgs boson, the so-called “God particle” that theory suggests gives matter its mass, but which has never been found. It should also determine whether all particles have a twin, as a theory known as “supersymmetry” suggests, and thus explain the mysterious “dark matter” that pervades the Universe, but which cannot be seen.

The LHC may even find new dimensions, beyond the three of space and one of time with which we are familiar. It promises to unlock great secrets of the cosmos.

“Particle physics is a modern name for the centuries-old effort to understand the laws of nature,” said Professor Tejinder Virdee, who heads the Compact Muon Solenoid detector team. “Humankind has an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and understanding the surroundings in which we live.

“The excitement is of having completed a machine that’s taken 20 years to plan and build. Now we’re looking forward to the really interesting part: even more excitement awaits us as we start doing the science. The LHC is going to look deeper into matter and go back further in time than we’ve been able to go before. It’s the most powerful microscope ever built and at the same time the most powerful telescope ever built.

“We have these theories, and now we’re getting into new territory to put them to the test. We don’t know what we’re going to find – that’s why we do the experiments.”

The first trial collisions, from which researchers will calibrate their detectors, could start as early as next week. The LHC will then start operating at about 70 per cent of maximum energy, before it is ramped up to full power next year. Discoveries about supersymmetry could come quickly, but the hunt for the Higgs boson will take longer, with few results expected before 2010.

India is one of the CERN member States

2008-09-10T08:21:00.000-07:00

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world's leading laboratory for particle physics. It has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. India, Israel, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have Observer status.Source: CERN

Scientists of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) will be webcasting Wednesday's event in Geneva through its bandwidth, for the benefit of media as well as the scientists, Prof Atul Gurtu, senior scientist, department of high energy physics, TIFR said.

Indian laboratories, led by Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology (RRCAT) at Indore, have contributed substantially towards construction of the accelerator (LHC) itself, with many components being fabricated by Indian industry and supplied to CERN, Gurtu said.

Towards the scientific side, two Indian teams are participating in different experiments. More

“It has been a fascinating and rewarding experience for us,” said Vinod C. Sahni, Director of India’s Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology, “I extend our best wishes to CERN for a productive run with the LHC machine in the years to come.” More

Stephen Hawking on LHC: vital if the human race is not to stultify and eventually die out."

2008-09-10T08:12:00.000-07:00

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Stephen Hawking: Large Hadron Collider vital for humanity

The work of the Large Hadron Collider is crucial for the survival of humanity, according to Professor Stephen Hawking.

By Jon Swaine
Last Updated: 12:14PM BST 10 Sep 2008

Prof Hawking said the £4.4bn machine, in which scientists are about to recreate conditions just after the Big Bang, is "vital if the human race is not to stultify and eventually die out."

And he sought to ease fears that the machine could have apocalyptic effects. "The world will not come to an end when the LHC turns on," Prof Hawking said, adding: "The LHC is absolutely safe."

Scientists at the CERN research centre in Switzerland are aiming to use the machine to gain a better understanding of the birth and structure of the universe, and to fill gaps in our knowledge of physics.

They hope that by recreating the moments after the Big Bang - the massive explosion thought to have created the universe - the experiment will make clearer what the universe is made of, what makes it expand and also to predict its future.

Prof Hawking, the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, said: "The LHC will increase the energy at which we can study particle interactions by a factor of four." More

A Brief History of Time

A Future when Time may stand still, not able to

go further

Dr Lyndon Evans, from Aberdare in south Wales, counted down "Five, four, three, two, one.. nothing" : The Big Experiment started

2008-09-10T07:11:00.000-07:00

At 9.30am BST, Wednesday 10th September 2008 protons were spun round the giant particle accelerator's 27 kilometre-long circular beam tunnel at just a fraction under the speed of light.

Getting the beam to circulate all the way round the 100 metre-deep underground tunnel was originally expected to take most of the day.

In fact the scientists also managed to send a beam in the opposite direction by about 2pm BST.

Later the particles will be made to smash into each other at energy levels up to seven times higher than any seen before.

The collisions, in four huge detectors arranged around the ring, will create conditions as tightly squeezed and hot as they were less than a billionth of a second after the Big Bang which gave birth to the universe.

Temperatures at that point at almost the beginning of time, around 14 billion years ago, reached a million billion degrees C.

The LHC is so large it straddles the borders of Switzerland and France between Lake Geneva and the Jura mountains.

During the "switch on" today the eyes of the world were on a Briton - LHC project leader Dr Lyndon Evans, from Aberdare in south Wales, who counted down the launch at the control centre at CERN, the European nuclear research organisation in Geneva.

Looking relaxed in a short-sleeved shirt and jeans, he joked: "Five, four, three, two, one.. nothing" before a blip appeared on a computer signalling that the machine was working.

A number of key players in the project are from the University of Liverpool, which is hosting this year's British Association Festival of Science.

Speaking at the festival, Professor Philip Allport, head of particle physics at the university, said: "It has gone even more smoothly than those who built the machine anticipated. More

Super steel for Fusion Reactors

2008-09-10T07:01:00.000-07:00

The New York buildings fell when their steel backbones lost strength in the fires that followed the plane impacts.

Dr Sergei Dudarev told the British Association Science Festival that improved steels were now being sought.

The principal scientist at the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) said one of the first applications for these better performing metals would be in the wall linings of fusion reactors where temperatures would be in a similar range to those experienced in the Twin Towers' fires.

'Not melting'

The key advance is the understanding that, at high temperatures, tiny irregularities in a steel's structure can disrupt its internal magnetic fields, making the rigid metal soft.

"Steels melt at about 1,150C (2,102F), but lose strength at much lower temperatures," explained Dr Sergei Dudarev, principal scientist at the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA).

Iron atoms in steel: Black balls show irregularities that disrupt magnetic fields, weakening steel

At room temperature, the magnetic fields between iron atoms remain regular, but when heated, these fields are altered allowing the atoms to slide past each other, weakening the steel.

"[The steel] becomes very soft. It is not melting but the effect is the same," said Dr Dudarev.

He said blacksmiths had exploited this property for hundreds of years - it allows iron to become pliable at temperatures much lower than its melting point.

The peak in this pliability is at 911.5C, but begins at much lower temperatures, at around 500C (932F) - a temperature often reached during building fires.

The steel backbone of the Twin Towers was probably exposed to temperatures close to this, when insulating panels - meant to protect the buildings' structural frame - were dislodged by the impacts of the hijacked planes.

The roaring fire mid-way up the building heated the steel struts, and once temperatures rose above 500C the structure became elastic, and collapsed under the force of the floors above. More

Going Beyond the Standard Model

2008-09-10T05:53:00.000-07:00

The Scientists by triggering the Hadron collision experiment today will be looking for new physics beyond the Standard Model – the framework devised in the 1970s to explain how sub-atomic particles interact.

The Standard Model comprises 16 particles – 12 matter particles and four force-carrier particles. The Standard Model has worked remarkably well so far.

But it cannot explain the best known of the so-called four fundamental forces: gravity; and it describes only ordinary matter, which makes up but a small part of the total Universe.

Also, one of the most important particles in the Standard Model – the Higgs boson – has yet to be found in an experiment.

Today, the Standard Model is regarded as incomplete, a mere stepping stone to something else. So the LHC should help reinvigorate physics' biggest endeavour: a grand theory to explain all physical phenomena in Nature.

However, some physicists point out that Nature has a habit of throwing curve balls. And some of the most exciting discoveries at the LHC could be those that no-one expects.

THE HUNT FOR THE HIGGS

There is an essential ingredient missing from the Standard Model. Without it, none of the 16 particles in the scheme would have any mass.

An extra particle is required to provide all the others with mass – the Higgs boson. This idea was proposed in 1964 by physicists Peter Higgs, Francois Englert and Robert Brout.

According to their theory, particles acquire mass through their interactions with an all-pervading field, called the Higgs field, which is carried by the Higgs boson. It is the only Standard Model particle that has yet to be observed experimentally. More

Dark Matter Dark Energy

All the matter that we can see in the Universe – planets, stars and galaxies – makes up a minuscule 4% of what is actually out there. The rest is dark energy (which accounts for 70% of the cosmos) and dark matter (26%).

Dark energy cannot be observed directly, but it is responsible for speeding up the expansion of the Universe – a phenomenon that can be detected in astronomical observations.

Astronomers have mapped dark matter's distribution, but have no idea what it is

Like dark energy, dark matter can only be detected indirectly, as it does not emit or reflect enough light to be seen. But its presence can be inferred through its effects on galaxies and galaxy clusters.

Physicists know virtually nothing about the nature of either dark energy or dark matter. But they can speculate.

According to one idea, dark matter could be made up of "supersymmetric particles" - massive particles that are partners to those already known in the Standard Model.

A leading dark matter candidate is the neutralino, the lightest of these "super-partners". And some theoretical physicists have proposed a link between the Higgs mechanism and dark energy. More

10 Dimensional world and String Theory

In addition to the four dimensions we already know about, string theory predicts the existence of six more.

Some physicists even think the existence of these extra dimensions could explain why gravity is so much weaker than the other fundamental forces. Perhaps, they argue, we are not feeling its full effects.

This might be explained if its force was being shared with other dimensions. If these extra dimensions do exist, the LHC could be the first accelerator to detect them experimentally.

At high energies, physicists could see evidence of particles moving between our world and these unseen realms. For example, they could see particles suddenly disappear into one of these dimensions.

Alternatively, particles originating from an extra dimension could suddenly appear in our world. More

Two Dimensions of Time

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Birth of amphibians

From chemistry to life

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BBC News - Planck telescope reveals ancient cosmic light

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Neutrino Search

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Alfred Russel Wallace: Darwin's co-discoverer - a forgotten hero

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Darwin’s theory of evolution was compatible with Christian faith: Vatican

smallest exoplanet, Corot-Exo-7b, has a high temperature - between 1,000 and 1,500C

NanoTech: What spoiled the CERN party

Dark matter clues in galactic crash

Water in Saturn's moon

India became the fourth nation to mark its presence on the Moon on Friday, Nov. 14, 2008

India celebrates planting its flag on moon

Planets outside the solar system - 130 light years away

Mars Mission Ends for Phoenix

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